A Burglar's Guide to the City (31 page)
Alphaville
by Michael Codella with Bruce Bennett (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2010) is an interesting introduction to the genre of the urban police memoir. Although I do not refer to them in this book, I also read and recommend
Blue Blood
by Edward Conlon (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004), the excellent
Homicide Special: A Year with the L.A.P.D.’s Elite Detective Unit
by Miles Corwin (New York: Owl Books, 2003), and
Vice: One Cop’s Story of Patrolling America’s Most Dangerous City
by Sergeant John R. Baker with Stephen J. Rivele (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011).
Jason England spoke to me from his home in Las Vegas in June and July of 2013. My conversation with Darrell Clifton from Circus Circus in Reno took place in July 2013. Jes Stewart from the Nevada Museum of Art spoke to me in May 2013 by phone, then gave me a security tour of the museum in June 2013. For more on trifoliate orange, see “Marine Corps Using Living Fence to Boost Security” (Associated Press, September 1988) and “No-Tech Terrorist Control: ‘Rambo Bush’ Defends Its Turf with Foliage, Vicious Thorns” (Mike Klingaman,
Milwaukee Journal
, February 1989).
I spoke with Janice Kerbel in September 2013. Thank you to Tim Maly for lending me his copy of
15 Lombard St.
(London: Book Works, 1998) while I worked on this book.
Randy Smith spoke to me in August 2013 from his home in Texas. Andy Schatz spoke to me in June 2013 from his home in San Diego.
The phrase
voluntary prisoners of architecture
refers to a project called
Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture
by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis (1972). It is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
“Lethal Theory” by Eyal Weizman was originally published in
Log
7 (Winter/Spring 2006) and can be found online. The paper was expanded and partially rewritten for his later book
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation
(London: Verso Books, 2007).
The story of my wife’s great-aunt, archaeologist Joan Harding, and the practice of deliberately omitting certain key architectural details from publicly available British estate floor plans, comes from conversations with my in-laws.
6: A Crime Is Nothing If You Can’t Get Away
Franz Kafka’s “A Message from the Emperor” was originally published in 1919; a new translation by Mark Harman was published in July 2011 by
The New York Review of Books
and is available online.
For more about the teenager in Łodz, Poland, see “Hacking Polish Trams” (Bruce Schneier,
Schneier on Security
, January 2008) and “Polish Teen Derails Tram After Hacking Train Network” (John Leyden,
Register
, January 2008). Cesar Cerrudo’s traffic-hacking work is documented in “Hacking U.S. (and UK, Australia, France, etc.) Traffic Control Systems” (Cesar Cerrudo, IOActive, April 2014) and “Traffic Light Hackers Could Cause Jams Across the U.S.” (Hal Hodson,
New Scientist
, August 2014). The example of faking gridlock on Waze was first reported in “Waze Under Attack: Israeli Students Fake Traffic Jam on Popular Map App” (Ido Efrati,
Haaretz
, March 2014). These stories also appear in Marc Goodman’s excellent book,
Future Crimes
(New York: Doubleday, 2015), which I refer to here for its discussion of GPS spoofing. For more about GPS jamming and spoofing, see “Car Thieves Using GPS ‘Jammers’” (Charles Arthur,
Guardian
, February 2010), “Organised Crime ‘Routinely Jamming GPS’” (Matt Warman,
Telegraph
, February 2012), “The Threat of GPS Jamming: The Risk to an Information Utility” (Jeff Coffed, white paper for Exelis, February 2014), and, of course, Marc Goodman’s
Future Crimes
.
Evgeny Morozov’s op-ed appeared under the title “The Rise of Data and the Death of Politics” (Evgeny Morozov,
Observer
, July 2014). The “Haussmannization” of Paris has been exhaustively covered by other writers; for an explicitly architectural focus, see
Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition
by Jeff Byles (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005) or even
The Kill
, a great novel by Émile Zola set during Haussmann’s demolitions, originally published in serial form in 1871 (New York: Modern Library, 2005, translated by Arthur Goldhammer). In his book
The Insurgent Barricade
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), historian Mark Traugott disputes the notion that Haussmann’s renovations were explicitly directed at preventing street barricades, claiming that their counterrevolutionary effects simply came from pushing the working class out of central Paris. For more on the history of urban lighting programs, see A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). For more on predictive policing, see, among other articles, “Predicting Crime, L.A.P.D.-Style” (Nate Berg,
Guardian
, June 2014).
The “Lamm technique” seems to be a favorite topic of crime writers; references to it are legion. I found
Herman “Baron” Lamm, the Father of Modern Bank Robbery
by Walter Mittelstaedt (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012) and
This Here’s a Stick-Up: The Big Bad Book of American Bank Robbery
by Duane Swierczynski (New York: Alpha Books, 2002) particularly useful. The Lamm technique is recommended as a business management strategy in
The Talent Code
by Daniel Coyle (New York: Bantam Books, 2009).
For more on the story of Anthony Curcio, see “Out of Prison, Real-Life Thomas Crown Looks Back on Almost-Perfect Heist” (Brooke Stangeland, ABC News, June 2013), “Tip Leads to Arrest in ‘Inner-Tube’ Robbery” (Christine Clarridge,
Seattle Times
, November 2008), and “Former High School Star Athlete Sentenced to Prison for Armored Car Robbery” (U.S. District Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington, July 2009).
Reformed bank robber Joe Loya spoke to me from his home in the East Bay in August 2013. While in prison, Loya began writing a memoir that was subsequently published upon his release as
The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber
(New York: Rayo, 2004).
The story of Los Angeles bank bandits throwing cash out of their getaway car comes from “Bank Robbery Suspects Throw Cash out the Window During Car Chase Through Downtown LA” (Anna Almendrala,
Huffington Post
, September 2012).
The phrase “a vast landscape of pursuit potential” comes from an article called “Anatomy of an L.A. Police Pursuit” (Nate Berg,
CityLab
, September 2012). Christopher Hawthorne first described his idea of the chase versus the manhunt to me in May 2013. For more on Christopher Dorner, see “The Manhunt for Christopher Dorner,” a special illustrated series by the
Los Angeles Times
published in December 2013. Grégoire Chamayou, whose essay “‘Every Move Will Be Recorded’: A Machinic Police Utopia in the Eighteenth Century” was referred to in chapter 2, has an interesting book on the history of the manhunt, called
Manhunts: A Philosophical History
(New York: Princeton University Press, 2012, translated by Steven Rendall).
For more on the Berlin bank-tunnel getaway, see “Berlin Bank Robbers Escape … Right Under Cops’ Noses” (Rick Atkinson,
Washington Post
, June 1995), as well as “Swede Held for Dramatic 1995 German Bank Robbery” (
Local
, June 2008). For more on the Buenos Aires tunnel getaway, see “S. America’s Big Dig: Bank Robbers Tunnel Their Way to Millions” (Monte Reel,
Washington Post
, February 2006).
“Urban Escape & Evasion” is a course offered by OnPoint Tactical; a schedule of upcoming instruction dates is available on the company’s website (
onpointtactical.com
).
Matt Jones’s essay on Jason Bourne’s use of cities first appeared on his blog,
Magical Nihilism
, in December 2008 under the title “The Bourne Infrastructure.”
Thank you to my in-laws for discussing the burglary of their home in suburban London, and for sharing with me details of the ensuing police investigation. I can only hope that the break-in was not some strange karmic payback for my writing a book called
A Burglar’s Guide to the City
.
The poem “Meier Helmbrecht” has been published in a variety of translations over the years; for this book, I relied on
Peasant Life in Old German Epics: “Meier Helmbrecht” and “Der Arme Heinrich”
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1931, translated by Clair Hayden Bell).
The tactic of “using the hand of a dead person” to commit burglary comes from
Magic in the Middle Ages
by Richard Kieckhefer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Franz Kafka’s parable “Before the Law” is probably best read in the context of his novel
The Trial
(New York: Schocken Books, 1998, translated by Breon Mitchell). See also
The Castle
(New York: Schocken Books, 1998, translated by Mark Harman).
No author is given for the article “When Burglars Learn to Handle the Aeroplane with Precision and Silence” (
NewYork Daily Tribune
, September 1910). Its subtitle? “Our artist takes a look into the future and foresees the time when roofs must be secured as carefully as any other part of the home.” In many ways, it is more accurate to describe this piece as a work of speculative crime fiction, not an article.
The security research of Tamara Denning and Tadayoshi Kohno can be found online, primarily through Denning’s own website (note that Denning is now an assistant professor at the University of Utah:
cs.utah.edu/~tdenning
). A ninety-four-page PDF from November 2009, called “The Future of Household Robots: Ensuring the Safety and Privacy of Users,” presents perhaps the most straightforward explanation of their research. For more, see “A Spotlight on Security and Privacy Risks with Future Household Robots: Attacks and Lessons” by Tamara Denning, Cynthia Matuszek, Karl Koscher, Joshua R. Smith, and Tadayoshi Kohno (Ubicomp 2009) or “Computer Security and the Modern Home” by Tamara Denning, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Henry M. Levy (
Communications of the ACM
, January 2013).
Jimmy Stamp’s writings on architecture and the city can be found online at his website (
jamestamp.com
) as well as on his blog (
lifewithoutbuildings.net
).
George Leonidas Leslie was buried in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hills Cemetery under the name George Howard on June 9, 1878.
The New York Times
covered his funeral in a small column called “The Yonkers Murder” on June 10, 1878. With not inconsiderable effort, Leslie’s unmarked grave can be found in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Division No. 1, Old Locust Grove Subdivision, Block 35, Grave 7534.
Like any other book,
A Burglar’s Guide to the City
was not written in isolation. Crucially, it could never have been written without a core group of people whose insights and willingness to speak—often at great length—about the architecture of crime kept everything from coming apart. Those people include retired FBI special agent William J. Rehder, LAPD tactical flight officer Cole Burdette, Karl Alizade of CitySafe, Sergeant Katherine Scheimreif of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Jes Stewart of the Nevada Museum of Art, Darrell Clifton, Jerry Toner (and Mary Beard, for introducing us), Chief Inspector Dave Stopford of the South Yorkshire Police, “Jack Dakswin,” Joe Loya, Janice Kerbel, Tamara Denning, Schuyler Towne, Eric Michaud, Deviant Ollam, Victoria Dengel, Jason England, Bernard Tschumi, Christopher Hawthorne, Andy Schatz, Randy Smith, Lana Corbi, and Tom Gaffney. Thanks again.
The Los Angeles Police Department deserves particular commendation for being uniquely accessible and open to my queries throughout my research. In particular, I am indebted to Tactical Flight Officers Cole Burdette and Mark Burdine; Detective Chris Casey, Commercial Crimes Division; Lieutenant Rob Edgar, who at the time of our meeting was head of the LAPD’s Burglary Special Section; and Detectives Don Hrycyk and John Clark. Based on my experience, the LAPD exhibited an openness and approachability that other police departments in the United States would be wise to emulate.
At the FBI, retired special agent William J. Rehder was notably generous with his time, insights, and willingness to discuss so many of the old cases detailed in his book,
Where the Money Is
. Retired FBI special agent Thomas McShane and Special Agent Brenda Cotton in New York City also spared time to speak at an event I organized at Columbia University in April 2012 about the architecture of burglary, bank crime, and museum heists.
In Chicago, I owe special thanks to Sergeant Jack Benigno of the Chicago Police Department, and to Patrick Thomas of the Chicago chapter of TOOOL.
In San Francisco, I had a useful and good-humored rooftop conversation with Robert Nagle of
The San Francisco Examiner
about crime in the Bay Area, and with Eric Michaud about the nature of lock-picking, technical innovation, and security research.
In England, I owe thanks to Chief Inspector David Stopford of the South Yorkshire Police; Mark Saunders, Surrey Police crime prevention design adviser in the Woking Borough; and my own in-laws, Steve and Valerie Twilley, whose unfortunate first-person experience with suburban burglary while I was working on the book nonetheless did not affect their encouragement for my writing it.
I also benefit from having incredibly interesting and supportive friends and colleagues. Architect and fellow true-crime enthusiast Jimmy Stamp was integral in helping develop some of the early ideas that formed this book; game designer Jim Rossignol served as an ideal matchmaker for putting me in touch with exactly the right people at the right time in the gaming world; art historian Michael Lewis from Williams College gave me a fascinating introduction to the role of fortification in early modern American domestic architecture; architect Minsuk Cho set up—and translated—a great conversation with Korean film director Choi Donghun about heists, capers, and crime that unfortunately did not make it into this book; and Christopher Hawthorne, Scott Macauley, Matt Jones, Ilona Gaynor, and Jason Grote all offered input during various phases of the book. Sean McDonald at FSG gave
Burglar’s Guide
its ultimate coherence and form.